From Ash
by TheYogurt
Summary: AU. Emiya Shirou was saved by another assassin.


**Disclaimer: Nasu owns all this stuff.**

**First attempt at fanfiction here, so bear with me. Critiques are cool. **

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><p>A landscape of flame and ash, of destruction and ruination. An ever-present smell of sulphur and burnt flesh filled the air along with the lament of the dead. It was truly a scene from hell.<p>

Amidst it all, a broken boy collapsed on the ground. Broken in body and spirit and mind. Flames consume and writhe around him. But he doesn't care.

Pain.

It's all the boy can think of. So much pain. He ignored the screams of the dying, shut out the wailing of his heart. Shut out the pain of others, because all he had room for was his own.

He walked until he collapsed. He's walked and walked and how far has long been forgotten. All he can see is flame and flickering embers. All he can smell is fire and burnt flesh. All he can hear is burning, the sound of incineration. And the cries of others.

Nobody will come to save him. Nobody will save them.

And he's tired of feeling pain.

So he makes no effort to move when the sound of creaking lumber giving way echoes around him, no effort to move when the building collapses on top of him in an inferno of ash and wood.

_Pain_. But it fades away quickly enough.

The boy's fragmented mind doesn't mind anymore. His eyes settle on a wisp of flame, crackling and waving. With the last vestiges of strength in his long numb arm, he stretches out his hand. A last, flickering thought.

'Warm...'

And the heat ends.

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><p>Emptiness. The man knows it is not a feeling one should have when one sees the sight before him, the eternal sight of a city wreathed in hellish flames.<p>

But it is what he feels. The same feeling he had when he killed a man, the same feeling he had when he did anything. Empty sustenance, with no meaning or purpose.

He stands amongst the throng of spectators that watch the outskirts of the blaze in horror, who stand uselessly as firefighters rush about. There's no connection between those people and himself - they are in tears, they are in horror, they are in shock. He feels none of these things.

He steps past the cordon into the inferno, ignoring the panicked shouts behind him. The blistering heat is of no concern to him. There is no emotion to be found in the fire, no emotion stirred by the dead.

His was a life dedicated to killing not preserving after all, an anomalous existence that the world had no need for.

He walks amongst the dead and burning, unmoved by the horrific sight. He walks past dismembered hands, incinerated corpses. Things that are familiar to him. Things that as an assassin, he should have reveled in but didn't.

He stopped.

He doesn't know why his eyes settled on a large pile of debris, why he singled out the figure of the small boy beneath what was once a wall.

The small red-haired boy had his hand outstretched. But not in the manner of the desperate, the pleading gestures of the helpless dead. A hand outstretched around a wisp of flame, as if to reach out to grasp the flame. If to reach out and grasp fire itself.

It makes no sense - nothing but an nonsensical act by a dying boy. It's nothing more than a meaningless gesture. But for the first time in his life, the assassin _feels_.

He walks over and pulls the body out with a slight exertion of effort, dislodging the boy's legs from beneath the rubble. Shifting stones, a pillar falls right besides him, shards of stone cutting his face. It's ignored in favor of checking the boy's heartbeat, burns and scarred tissue doing nothing to dissuade the once-killer.

Deceased. Recently.

He doesn't know why, but he felt something at seeing the boy. Why?

And more than ever, he doesn't want to let go of the sensation of emotion. So he places his hand on the boy's chest and _pushes_.

He doesn't quite know what he was expecting. He knows it's a futile gesture. The boy was already dead. No breath, no heartbeat. One couldn't resuscitate the dead.

But instead of silence, he receives a faint cough. Instead of silence, a roaring beat that replaced the prior sound of nothingness. It should be impossible.

The boy's eyes open and their eyes meet.

Spellbound. He had killed before and watched the light fade from the eyes of the dying. But this boy... There is fire in those eyes, the spark of life that the assassin has sought his entire life. _Meaning._ A killer, meeting one who is on the brink of death. So why do those eyes have more life, more emotion than his?

And just as quickly as he woke up, the boy slips back into unconsciousness before the assassin can react. But as the sounds of sirens and shouts fill the street behind him, the man knows that he cannot relinquish his grasp on this path. He doesn't know if redemption awaits at the end, but he has already spent his life learning to be a killer, and it has left him empty. There is naught left to do but try.

Kuzuki Soichiro stands up and beckons the firefighters to where he is.

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><p>The chief firefighter was a hulking mountain of a man, a jovial giant on all but the worst days. This counted as one of them.<p>

In his entire career, never had he seen a conflagration like the one that overtook Fuyuki City. The flickering inferno that engulfed several blocks of the city had spread quickly, and his motley crew of firefighters were too late, too under-equipped to save the people in there. In this sector, his men had failed to save a single life.

So many corpses filled the street. Each and every one a monument to their failure.

So when one of his firefighters radioed in that a tall man in a business suit had walked through the cordon into the inferno (and subsequently started an entire mob of citizens demanding to help that his men were hard-pressed to halt), he immediately assembled the men around him and chased after the man.

_"He was headed down what was..."_

He couldn't let another man die in there, after all the lives they failed to save. The ravaging fire had consumed too much and he didn't need another life on his conscience.

_"We lost track of him around 2nd and..."_

He halted, grimacing as a pillar came crashing down near him. Water quickly sprayed and removed the flames barring the path.

_"Hurry! I heard a crash up ahead!"_

He broke into an all-out spring. Not again. Not again. He turned the corner.

A tall and wiry man waved at them. And beside him...

The chief's breath hitched. A body marred by burns, but still recognizable as a small red-haired boy. A survivor?

"Get stretchers here now! There's a survivor! A boy!"

His men scrambled at the sight, the joy of having found at least a single life to save energizing them. The boy was quickly hoisted onto a stretcher by careful hands.

He himself strode over to the man and intent on berating him for walking into the fire. "What were you _thinking _of, walking into the fire with no protective gear? I know you might have been worried about the people inside, but you need to think of your own...!"

The man cuts him off with a curt gesture, ice-cold eyes stopping the chief's lecture.

"Saving my son."

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><p><strong>AN: Because Kuzuki is an interesting character that is underused. And after reading Tainted Ideals, the idea of a Shirou that wasn't raisedsaved by Kiritsugu...**


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